1. Three things you will meet
They look similar and are often on the same screen, but they answer different questions.
| What | Answers | Looks like |
|---|---|---|
| KPI tile | "How many, right now?" | One large number with a caption and an icon. |
| Chart | "Which way is it going?" | Bars, lines, a donut. |
| Dashboard | "How is this whole area doing?" | A page of tiles and charts together. |
All three read the same records as the reports do. They are a faster way to look at the same truth, never a separate copy of it.
2. Reading a KPI tile
A tile is one number, and most of them are clickable — clicking takes you to the list the number was counted from. That is the fastest way to answer "which ones?" after seeing "how many".
Tiles on your own home page also show a comparison — how the same figure looked over the same stretch of the previous month. That last part matters: on the 15th, this month is compared with the first 15 days of last month, not the whole of it. Comparing half a month with a full one would paint an alarming red on every tile in the middle of every month.
Some tiles change colour as they rise — amber, then red — because the thing they count is something to act on, such as late arrivals or overdue tasks. Others invert, turning amber and red as they fall, because running low is the bad direction. Leave days left works that way.
Live tiles refresh themselves. Anything counting today's activity updates on its own while the page is open, so a dashboard left on a screen stays current without anybody pressing anything.
3. Reading a chart
Charts are interactive. Hover a bar or a point to see the exact figure; click a legend entry to hide or show that series, which is the quickest way to compare two of five things.
Where a chart has a period bar or filters above it, they work exactly as they do on a report — see the period bar. Many charts are also linked: clicking through takes you to the underlying list.
Read the caption before the shape. Attendance charts usually exclude weekends and holidays, because leaving them in produces a sawtooth that hides the real pattern. Your My Attendance report does include them, because a record with days missing invites the question of what else is missing. Same data, two honest treatments — the caption tells you which one you are looking at.
4. Dashboards
A dashboard puts a module's tiles and charts on one page — HR and payroll, attendance, supply chain, documents, and so on. Which dashboards you can open depends on your role.
Some carry an Email button that sends the whole dashboard — the tile figures and the panel data — to somebody, either inside the message or as a spreadsheet. That is the intended way to send a manager a weekly picture, rather than photographing the screen.
5. Rearranging your home page
Your home page is yours. The layout you are given is a starting point, not a fixture.
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Move a panel
Drag it by its title bar and drop it where you want it, including into another column. The arrangement is remembered for you.
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Remove what you do not use
Each panel has a Remove control. Nothing is deleted — the panel simply stops appearing on your page.
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Put something back
Open Personalize Home to see everything available, including panels that are not on your page by default, and add them.
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Four panels cannot be removed
They are the page's skeleton — the ones that carry your identity, your punch state and your work. Everything else is yours to arrange.
Spend five minutes on this once. The home page is the screen you will open more than any other. Putting the two panels you actually use at the top pays for itself within a week.
6. When a number looks wrong
Before reporting it, check these four in order. In practice one of them is almost always the answer.
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What period is it showing?
This month to date is not the same as last month, and a tile comparing "the same stretch" is not comparing whole months.
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What is it counting, exactly?
The caption is precise. Days present excludes weekends and holidays; late arrivals counts every status that begins with a late arrival, including days that were also an early leave.
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Is it scoped to you?
Everything on your own home page counts only your records, whoever you are.
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Click through
Open the list behind the number and count the rows. Nine times out of ten this shows immediately that the number is right and the expectation was about something slightly different.
If it survives all four, report it — with the screen, the period and the number you expected. A genuine discrepancy is worth finding, and those three details are what make it findable.